“I called him six times,” Gilmour said. “I never heard back from him. I figured it out.”

Instead, the likely Hall-of-Fame center signed on with the Canadiens for this season and a club option next year, turning down chances to play for Ottawa and St. Louis, while Toronto had shown interest in bringing back its former captain.

Now 38, Gilmour is practicing with the team, getting in shape and aiming to make his Canadiens debut next weekend, either Friday in Washington or, more likely, Saturday at home against his last team, the Sabres. He sat out last night as the Devils visited the unbeaten Canadiens and will also miss tomorrow’s visit by the Rangers.

The Devils have a center slot manned by Jason Arnott, Bobby Holik, Scott Gomez and John Madden, a formidable crew, and someone would have had to be bumped if Lamoriello had brought in Gilmour.

Gilmour said that neither the Rangers nor the Islanders made a bid for his services.

He figured that Montreal has a better up side than Ottawa might, and enjoyed the idea of playing for his third Original Six team.

The Canadiens needed a leader at center, a slick playmaker to fill the void left by captain Saku Koivu’s bout with cancer.

“I felt this was a good, young, fast team,” Gilmour said. “I think this team has just as good an opportunity as Ottawa does.”

The Canadiens made Gilmour’s choice look like the right one early, going 3-0-1 in their first four games of the season.

“They can just keep on going like this, if they want. I’ll just sit here,” Gilmour said in jest.

Gilmour left the Devils to sign with the Blackhawks in 1998 as an unrestricted free agent and was dealt with J.P. Dumont for Michal Grosek at the trade deadline in March, 2000.

After swallowing his unhappiness at being played on left wing instead of center, Gilmour left the Sabres after last season as an unrestricted, promptly denying reports that he retired.

“At the end of the year, they asked me if I was done. I said, ‘I am, here.’ Buffalo announced that I’d retired. The next day, I drove to Toronto to the Players Association and told them that I’m not retired,” Gilmour said.

Gilmour, however, didn’t make up his mind to return until the exhibition season had begun.

“The game plan was that I wouldn’t come back until November or December, when we’d see who had injuries or needed help,” Gilmour said. “But then I decided, no, I should start now.”

One aspect of his deal with the Canadiens, worth $2 million a year, was an understanding that he’d play center, not wing. He decided he didn’t want to end his career the way last season went in Buffalo.

“When you leave on the terms I left on, it’s tough. It felt incomplete. My wife said, ‘You have to go one more time.’ It was a little bit of a sour taste,” Gilmour said. “The ice-time was there, but I was playing left wing. I have to see the ice. Going up and down the wing, that’s not my game.

“Teams don’t want me to be a left wing. But last year, [Buffalo believed] I wasn’t big enough to be a center.”

They know in Montreal that centers don’t have to be large to be great. The Canadiens may have found the perfect solution to their Koivu crisis.